Heard this today from Reuters – Eight million Americans admit they send themselves Valentine’s Day gifts — they may feel lonely and unloved but at least they will get something nice!

Called into two Tesco’s this evening trying to get Valentine Cards! Someone there really dropped the ball in the product department because they had NO CARDS!!! So you gotta ask yourself where is the love?

Valentines Cards have such a high return that it’s over 50,000% ROI. I ended up in a shop that was charging from 4.99 to 8.99 for the card(s) that i bought. But it’s not just the ROI that Tesco and other Supermarkets are missing out on, when your there you’re highly likely to get some spontanous transactions (chocolate etc).

Can anyone think of any reasons why they wouldnt sell the cards??

Shopping for a few new tracks for a DJ Set i’m playing tonight in one of Dublin’s top nightclubs – Velvet in Swords and i’m shocked that in this day and age when companies are spending millions trying to get people to legally download music, record companies are still acting like they can pick and choose who they will and wont sell to.

One of my favourite places to shop online for music is BeatPort and was shocked to see a notice saying that people in my “terrority” can’t purchase one of the tracks that i wanted!! What sort of idiots would come up with such restrictions – its a blatent loss of revenue. I could buy the track on i-tunes, same version, but its part of a mix CD so that’s not acceptable for putting into a DJ Set. What annoys me further is its a newer remix of a track that i’ve bought several times over throughout the years… and the average punter can log onto a p2p server and download it illegally easily. Essentially meaning that a non professional or any average Joe can pull together a better record collectionas the expense of records company etc.

Not that i really loose sleep that record companies who refuse to make available songs legally loose revenue when people illegally download music they can’t buy anyway, then they download music they could buy, because frankly nowadays they are still making it harder to do it the legal way. The only reason i don’t use the illegal way is cause (1.) i believe in contributing to the people that are making the music i use to fill the clubs and (2.) the authorities are gunning for Professional DJs that illegally download music – which is fair!

My point is Record companies, should insist that the moment a song is on MTV, promo’d or released in America (etc.) it should be on worldwide LEGAL release on ALL TERRORITIES and ALL REMIXES! If they are sharing a licence like, for example, Nalin and Kane ft Denis The Menace – Cruising (Beachball Again). They should insist that the record companies make it available and share the license profits. After all punters like me are happily paying upto 2.5 times the normal download rate to get niche music like the music in this example ($2.49 instead of 99c on I-Tunes).

Max Roam pull it out of the bag with thier latest upgrade to their service. As well as knowing some of the Team and holding them in the highest regard, I use my Max Roam daily – and can vouch that it works great.

Key Features of the update include:

· Full LIVE billing

· Local number list expanded, reductions on cost on local numbers

· Free call forwarding of your MAXroam numbers- zero cost roaming

· Send global SMS from your MAXroam account for only 5c

· Sales are 120% over targets for first Qtr.

· 5 new global carriers interconnected

· Connectivity running at 81% for QTR

· Full customer service hub opened

· Large upgrades planned for next two Qtr’s

· Appointment of Mr Christopher Kennedy as platform manager.

· Alliance with Global roaming, new group has 80,000 subscribers

There’s always loads on the blogsphere about max roam with several great bloggers, independant service companies such as Hotel Express and ofcourse my good friend Pat and the maxroam team all reporting good things. The reason for this chatter is that a small Irish company came along and gave the big bullies in the industry a slap in the face. That was just over a year ago and it now seems that with the latest upgrade, this company is no longer a small kid in the play ground, rather they’re giving the bullies reason to question their cartel. It’s is a success story worthy of any MBA studying.

Hey Pat, when your done any chance of writing a book???

Just thought I’d let any regular readers know (if anyone reads this regularly? is that a bit presumptuous??), TheCostumeShop Blog is now online. On the Blog myself and the staff at TheCostumeShop will be writing about the world of fancy dress and giving tips, hints and info on how to choose the perfect outfit for your fancy dress parties.

It’s official, St. Patricks day – generally assumed to be the 17th of March has been moved to the 15th due catholic church authorities not wanting it to fall in their holy week.

Had an interesting discussion today. Was querying the validity of offering free delivery over charging for it. Its something i probably should have give much more thought into when launching IrelandCostumes.com but since personally i hate tricky charges that end up winding up the end total when shopping online – i made a hasty choice to offer free shipping. Ok so by “free” it is factored into the price – but at least unlike some of our competitors (who charge 27 Euro to deliver – even if the item doesnt cost as much as the shipping!!!) i felt customers would get a upfront view of the costs.

Then this morning Alan Keane Co-founder of Cubic threw me an analogy that made my head spin and had me in an instant (in a kinda of Satori moment) completely change my mind.

“Have you ever heard of someone tell you their flight only cost 1 Cent with Ryanair? Well they actually paid 50quid ish in taxes, but all they think the flight cost was 1 Cent. Yeah there were other costs – but in their mind they were for other things” said Alan. And it makes sense.

So i chewed it over for a while, i’d rarely pay postage for a low ticket item like a DVD, but then again postage for these items is cheap and rarely via registered postage etc; but then somewhere like E-bay i’d expect to pay the postage and packaging. It all comes down to meeting unconcious customer expectations. Keep low ticket items, with low shipping costs free. Keep high ticket items (350+ Euro) free. And make medium ticket items (20 – 349Euro) at a reasonable, easy to understand fee, that encourages buying more items to divide the per unit cost of shipping and encourages WOM (Word Of Mouth) marketing.

So it’s been decided IrelandCostumes will change over to item price plus a fixed shipping cost in Jan. That way for price comparing customers out there its first glance cheaper and then better postage rates too should pulling in more multiple item orders.

I never thought i’d be writing about politics here, but i’m been fed up of hearing about the Mahon Tribunal.

Bertie is the Elected leader of Ireland and what people don’t seem to understand that he’s like the CEO and Entrepreneur of our country. For me running a buiness is 24/7, even when your not working your brain is chewing over things and often i’d wake up in the middle of the night with an idea or solution to a problem related to the business.

So surely the countries leader, when he should be chewing over idea’s to improve the country, which is heading towards a down turn in the economy; rather than thinking about his job he is preparing for and worrying about himself (or a stupid tribunal which ever side your inclined to). Yes technically he may have done something wrong. The figures arent huge and at the time it wasn’t that abnormal. Lawyers are creaming it in and the country is suffering because of it. Has anyone thought to do a tax payers opportunity costings?

Was surfing around the web this afternoon and noticed that PartyWarehouse has gone into liquidation. “PartyWarehouse.ie – Europe’s biggest and best online party store!” (according to their own site has ceased business). Which is a shame as it had seemed from the outside to be a good business model.

Just occured to me its nearly impossible to get a Dell laptop with a built in web cam, but the average phone is capable of making of video calls. Shouldn’t this be an essential feature nowadays? or is it a case that some people dont wanna be seen when they communicate?

Just an off the wall thought really.